Latin American women meet in Cuba, discuss their political struggles

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Three hundred Latin American women from 27 countries and diverse backgrounds attended a week-long conference June 3-7 in Havana. Entitled "The Current Situation of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean," the conference was called by the Women's Continental Front Against Intervention (WCFAI).

Karen Wald, a North American correspondent in Cuba for the International News Service, attended the conference and spoke to WCFAI Coordinator Comandante Doris Tijerino of Nicaragua and Magaly Pineda, a delegate from the DominWald's interview with Pineda follows this brief summary of the conference, which is based on Wald's report. Major excerpts from the interview with Tijerino will be published in the October issue of Socialist Action.

The first workshop, "Economic situation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which focused on the Latin American debt, attracted the most women. Fidel Castro and Cuban Women's Federation President Vilma Espin both attended Delegates described the situations in their own countries resulting from the foreign debt and the subsequent high interest rates, inflation, and unemployment. They focused on the effects of the economic crisis on women in rural areas and Ilda Uriza, a recently re-elected deputy in the Peruvian legislature, echoed the majority of delegates when she stated: "The debt is not payable: either we pay it with the lives of the vast majority of Peruvians, or we take a stand and say this debt will not be paid. " Uriza is a member of the ruling APRA party.

Several women claimed the imperialist countries are the real debtors, since "their development was financed at the expense of Third World people's exploitation, The second workshop, "Integration of women in the political reality of the continent and their own countries, discussed the issue of "women in emergency situations." This includes women facing the U.S. wars in Central America and others living under dictatorships and suffering as prisoners or refugees.

Reagan's economic blockade of Nicaragua was condemned as a glaring violation of international law and a severe hardship on women already confronted by miliAt the third workshop, "Multiplicity of forms of struggle" revolutionaries, illiterate campesinas, the wives and daughters of mineworkers, guerrilla fighters, artists, and the wives of government officials met and discussed their particular strugThe workshop on "Women in art and culture,, besides covering discrimination against women, also pointed out the effects of imperialism and colonialism in shapA delegate from Puerto Rico cited her people's use of Spanish as a method of The conference ended with reports from the four workshops and a final statement was adopted. A short quote from their resolution illustrates the insight and "Aware of our strength and that the problems of women are the problems of their peoples, that the crisis is a double burden because of the inequality and discrimination which for centuries have affected generations of women, we are agreed in that the struggle against the discrimination of women and for full equality is an inseparable part of the struggle against dependency and underdevelopment." ican Republic. the workshop daily.

urban slums. hunger and misery." tary attacks.

gles.

ing and suppressing their native cultures.

resistance to the dominant culture of the United States.

solidarity the delegates gained through the conference:

-SUZANNE FORSYTH country is the source of employment for a large sector of the population; liberalizing the investments of the capitalists; and deepening the penetration of international capital—the multinational corporations—into our country.

Concretely, for the Dominican people, this economic crisis has manifested itself in the following way: The price of basic food staples-bread, milk, ricehas skyrocketed. Medicine is no longer accessible. One of the agreements with the IMF was to devalue the peso. The price of medicine, like other imported items, has almost tripled, while our salaries have remained the same.

Ours is a rich country agriculturally, yet we have to import flour to make bread. We have to import rice and most other foods. Our national industry is weak. We have to import raw materials. Although we produce detergent and sanitary napkins, for example, we still have to buy these from abroad.

This is how the renegotiation of the debt accentuates the crisis situation in which we have lived for many decades. But when I say "we" I mean especially the women-particularly the poor women from the urban and rural areas.

Wald: How does the crisis affect women in particular?

Pineda: First of all, the real wage in the Dominican Republic has severely declined. The minimum salary in 1984— and things have gotten much worse Even though this strike affected the emergency services for some time, the strike was supported by the people because the people know that going to a hospital is no better than staying at home to die.

To help make ends meet, children are forced to shine shoes, sell newspapers, wash car windows at traffic lights, sell fruits-even steal. This means they can't go to school.

Housewives in the shantytowns must do the family work in the worst possible conditions; sometimes without any available water. They have to cook with charcoal. There are no price controls. Women must walk miles from grocery store to grocery store in search of the best prices because the store owners have no scruples and often hoard the produce to jack up prices.

The burden on women is immense. Approximately 40 percent of Dominican households are headed by women. Women must take jobs washing and ironing clothes, selling ice cream, reselling fruits and vegetables in their neighborhoods, sewing dresses. If they have jobs, they are the poorest paid.

In addition, young girls-often 11, 12 or 13 years old—are prostituting themselves. Prostitution as a strategy for sheer survival has increased dramatically.

The high rates of unemployment— and the fact that women have little access to jobs-have also put a lot of pressure on women to migrate; not only from the countryside to the cities, but to the United States and other countries as well. In New York alone, there are 500,000 Dominicans.

Women in particular feel compelled to leave the country, often without a visa, which is increasingly difficult to obtain. Today countries that in the past had opened their doors to foreign workers, who provided dirt cheap labor in jobs their own citizens wouldn't do, are now closing their doors shut.

They are no longer interested in the immigrant workers. Now the multinational corporations come to fetch the cheap labor in our own countries, installing their sweatshops, which they close and move about at their whim. So now the quotas on visas have been greatly reduced.

Dominican women try to travel abroad, hoping to earn some money. They go to Spain, Germany, Greece, or Saudi Arabia, where they become prostitutes. Our women can be found on the streets of all the major European cities and in the oil regions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

There was recently the case of 28 prostitutes who asphyxiated to death, trying to escape in the cargo compartment of a ship traveling from the isle of St. Martha to St. Kitts.

I personally spoke to a prostitute in Rotterdam, Holland. I asked her what she did with her money. She told me she sent it home to Santo Domingo to help raise her three children. She said she supported them by "enslaving her body."